The invention is directed to a wide area network (WAN) of vending machines connected to a host, and more particularly to such a network in which the host builds a database of vending-related information received by the host from the vending machines, respectively.
Vending machines, particularly soft drink vending machines, are well known. Typically, such soft drink vending machines are owned by the bottlers who bottle the soft drink. Together, several bottlers typically own hundreds of thousands of vending machines.
The inventories in bottled/canned soft drinks, as well as different denominations of coins (for the purposes of making change), in a vending machine are exhausted at rates that depend very heavily upon the location of the vending machine and the time of the year. For example, more soft drink is consumed in the hot summer months than in the cold winter months.
For a long time, bottlers would schedule regular visits to a vending machine based upon the experience of the bottler. The service person would only discover the actual degree to which the inventories had been depleted when he opened the machine to restock it. This was an inefficient system because there were many times that the service person visited a machine whose inventory was barely depleted, thus wasting the cost of a service call. Other times, a service person would discover that one or more of the inventories in a machine were completely depleted, indicating that this machine should have been serviced much sooner in order to avoid lost sales due to the completely depleted inventories. Moreover, there was no way to determine how long the greatly depleted state of the inventories had existed.
As a way to more rigorously analyze the vending patterns of a particular machine, a system was developed by which a service person would connect a data collection unit to the vending machine during the service call. When the service person returned to the bottler, this data was downloaded to a host computer where it was analyzed. While an improvement, the states of the inventories in a vending machine remained unknown until the service person opened the machine. This system, based upon hand-held data recover units, could not monitor vending activity in real time.
An improvement upon this system was developed by The Harvest Corporation of New Zealand (hereafter the Harvest System) and is depicted in FIG. 1, which includes: a plurality of vending machines 102 (only one of which is depicted for simplicity); a plurality of controller interfaces 104 (only one of which is depicted for simplicity; the interface 104 being depicted outside, but typically located inside, a corresponding-vending machine 102); a public switched telephone network (PSTN) 106; a circuit-switched cellular network (CSCN) 108; a data warehouse 110; and a plurality of bottlers"" computers 112, 114 and 116.
This system of FIG. 1 connects a plurality of vending machines 102 to a data warehouse 110 via either the PSTN 106 or the CSCN 108. Each communications interface 104 connects exclusively to the PSTN 106 or the CSCN 108. In addition, the data warehouse 110 is a centralized data storage facility for the bottler, who accesses this data by remotely connecting his computer 112, 114 or 116 to the data warehouse 110. The bottler""s computer 112, 114 or 116 contains software to analyze the vending patterns hidden in the raw vending-related data stored in the database created by the data warehouse 110. The organization of the data in the data warehouse appears to be proprietary.
At first, the Harvest system communicated only via a PSTN 106, so it used only a single-communication-technology interface. Then, it was upgraded to also communicate via a CSCN 108. It is noted that this prior art responded to changes in the communication technology (from PSTN to CSCN) by developing a new single-communication-technology interface 104. Again, a single-communication-technology interface 104 can be connected to the PSTN 106 or a CSCN 108, but not both. In other words, the prior art responded to a request to use an alternative communications technology by designing a new single-communication-technology interface 104 for the vending machine 102. The new single-communication-technology interface 104 replaced the existing single-communication-technology interface 104 in a vending machine 102 for which the use of an alternate communications technology was desired.
In the Harvest system, when it is desired to switch a vending machine 102 from using PSTN 106 to using a CSCN 108, it is necessary to replace the dedicated PSTN interface 104 in the vending machine with a dedicated CSCN interface 104. This is not a simple matter, which tends to retard the likelihood that such a switch would be made.
The invention represents, among other things, a recognition that alternate communication technologies exist in a given area and that it may be desirable from time to time to easily change the communication technology being used by one or more, but not necessarily all, of the vending machines owned by a bottler.
The invention also represents, among other things, a recognition that there is an efficient way to communicate vending-related data from the vending machine to a data warehouse that minimizes the expense of establishing a remote connection.
The invention also represents, among other things, a recognition that the database can be built using a data structure that efficiently organizes the information in terms of the needs of one or more bottlers.
The invention, among other things, provides a vending machine communication system comprising: a vending machine data acquisition unit to collect vending-related data concerning said vending machine; and a multiple-communication-technology adapter to interface said data acquisition unit to a plurality of communication technologies including a first wireless technology.
The invention, among other things, also provides a vending machine monitoring system comprising: a plurality of vending machines, each vending machine having a communication system that includes a vending machine data acquisition unit for collecting vending-related data concerning said vending machine; a multiple-communication-technology adapter to interface said data acquisition unit to a plurality of communication technologies including a first wireless technology, said adapter preferably including a modem; and a dedicated terminal unit of one of a plurality of communication technologies, said dedicated terminal unit being operable to connect said modem to a network operating according to said one of said plurality of communication technologies; a first network operating according to a first one of said plurality of communication technologies; a second network operating according to a second one of said plurality of communication technologies; a communications concentrator, connected to said first and second networks, for communicating with each said data acquisition unit via said modem and one of said first and second networks, respectively; a data warehouse unit for building a database that includes data corresponding to each of said vending machines; and a data processor for analyzing said data stored in said database.
The invention, among other things, also provides a memory for storing, vending machine-related data, corresponding to a plurality of vending machines managed by a manager, that is to be managed for access by an application program being executed on a data processing system of said manager. This memory includes data structures, and each such data structure has: a first data element for storing an identification of one of said vending machines; a second data element, associated with said first data element, for storing a most recent set of prediction information about said one of said vending machines; a third data element, associated with said first data element, for storing a next most recent set of prediction information about said one of said vending machines; a fourth data element, associated with said first data element, for storing a most recent set of refill-visit information for said one of said vending machines; and a fifth data element, associated with said first data element, for storing a next most recent set of refill-visit information for said one of said vending machines.
The invention, among other things, also provides a vending machine monitoring system comprising: a plurality of vending machines; a wide area network for connecting said plurality of vending machines to a communications concentrator; said communications concentrator for communicating with each of said plurality of vending machines, respectively and a data warehouse unit. The data warehouse unit builds a database that contains data corresponding to each of said vending machines. The data warehouse uses the data structure discussed above to build the database.
The present invention will become more apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter. However, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description.